The World Out There

"How lucky we are, that we can experience that divine spark with one another, and with all recovering women. The program offers us the chance, every moment of our lives from this day forward, to experience divinity. All we are asked to do is be there, for one another, to share fully who we are. Vulnerability gets easier as we learn that we can trust each other, that we can share pain, that it's okay to pull and prod and follow, first you and then me and then her." - Each Day a New Beginning

The Program is without doubt a fellowship. It's darn near impossible to go to meetings every day and not develop the kind of close friendships never possible for while we were drinking. All of my friends and BF are in the Program. All the socializing I did this holiday weekend was Program-related.

But I need to be very careful in my thinking about those who are not recovering alcoholics - you know, "normal people" (those freaks that have one serving of alcohol and then stop because they are "starting to feel it").

I got sober because my ability to function in the world was declining. Now that I'm sober, I am a mom, an employee, BF's girlfriend, a friend, a volunteer ... in other words, I am now functioning out in the world again. That's the whole point of sobriety for me.

Society fears alcoholism, and it should: drinking alcoholics are responsible for almost all of this country's fatalities that involved booze, from driving while intoxicated to domestic violence and everything in between. We kill an average of 18,000 innocent bystanders each year just by getting behind the wheel of a car drunk. To add insult to society's injury, we tend to survive these vehicular homicides because we're so drunk!

Sure, I have "normal" people in my life who don't really "get" this recovery thing, but they didn't "get" my drinking either. I have realized that they aren't ever going to fully understand, and it's not their job to understand me. The Big Book tells me that my end-all mission in life is to be helpful, not to hope others help me.

I am the only Big Book most people will ever read.